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Some young Russians look back romantically on the '205 and the "purity" of a revolutionary creed that has somehow dissolved into the cynical conformity of the society they know. Snorted a character in a short story published in Youth Magazine: "Heroism, self-sacrifice! That's what the journalists write about. But look around: what everyone's worrying about is how to grab off more for himself." The young idolize Fidel Castro, whose revolution in their eyes embodies the authentic ideological fervor that has gone from their own. This vision was heightened by Poet Evtushenko, who visited Cuba last year and in Pravda proclaimed: "Revolution may be grim but not, goddamit, dull."
In some respects, Evtushenko and his followers resemble U.S. beatniks. But where U.S. beats glorify unwashedness, shook-up Soviet youth flaunts foppish clothes as the badge of their individualism. Russian youths crave the varied and permissive life that would be their birthright in the West. One of the most revealing, wistful expressions of Russian claustrophobia is a poem written by Evtu-shenko in 1958:
The frontiers oppress me.
I feel it awkward
Not knowing Buenos Aires,
New York.
I want to wander
As much as I like
In London,
To talk, however brokenly,
With everybody . . .
Vladimir Mitty. Unable to travel beyond the Soviet Union, young Russians are extravagantly addicted to Western fads and customs, which themselves are a sort of Vladimir Mitty substitute for first-hand experience of the outside world.
A significant event in their lives was the 1957 World Youth Festival, which brought 15,000 young foreigners into Moscow for a propaganda jamboree aimed at impressing them with the rich, free life under Soviet Communism. Instead, after mingling for the first time with their contemporaries from five continents, many young Russians seemed to be profoundly impressed by the free, privileged life that belongs to youth outside Russia. For three weeks, the visitors sang, drank and talked with open-mouthed Russian youngsters.
Ever since, the Kremlin has backed away from its stubborn resistance to "bourgeois" Western tastes in clothes, jazz and mating rites. The regime has yielded to youth's demands for its own distinctive styles, is actually manufacturing blue jeans for the first time. For the Jet Set, Moscow's vast GUM department store has a serviceable facsimile of an inexpensive, tight-trousered Italian man's suit for $150 ; it also sells spiked heels ($55), which even the best-heeled Muscovite miss often totes to parties in a paper bag.